


the heavens can be both sacred and dust

by laikaspeaks



Series: FE3H Drabble Collection [6]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Edeleth Week 2020, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:41:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26859136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laikaspeaks/pseuds/laikaspeaks
Summary: Prompts for Edeleth Week 2020.1. Purple/Modern AU - Byleth dies in the final confrontation against the Immaculate One, but her story doesn't end there.2. Monster - Edelgard and Hubert sneak into the tomb alone to enact their plans. They run into an unexpected hurdle.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth
Series: FE3H Drabble Collection [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1553494
Comments: 4
Kudos: 66





	1. Purple/Modern AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter depicts graphic character death. There is a happy ending!

The Immaculate One was defeated, her foul ichor spreading in a great pool on the stones. The beast still shuddered and wheezed, but it wouldn’t be long. It was the end.

It was the end. Edelgard could hear it in the way Byleth’s breath came in wet, pained inhales, the way her body shook in her arms. Part of her wanted to scream and plead, to order Byleth to defy the odds the way she did every day until now.

The rest of her was struck still and silent, hanging off the words Byleth was struggling to speak. She always wanted to hear what she had to say, especially here at the end.

“E-edelgard. I -”

Byleth’s hand grasped blindly upward, and Edelgard caught it with numb fingers, pulling it to her cheek. 

“I’m sorry.” Byleth tried again. “I knew that this might… might happen.”

“Wh-” That sent a bolt of pain through Edelgard’s chest, stealing her breath from her lungs. Did Byleth come here thinking she would die? And she came anyway? It was one thing for Edelgard to sacrifice herself, she was broken and reforged for that purpose… but Byleth? Her - her Byleth? 

Byleth continued heedlessly, as though the words could no longer be contained. “She made my mother… and me. With magic. I didn’t know if I would…” She coughed, blood frothing at the corners of her lips, and her words became more urgent. “I tried, I tried again and again but I couldn’t… couldn’t find a better way. I’m sorry. I hoped… forgive -”

Her words were starting to make no sense. How much time did they have? Not enough.

“There’s nothing to forgive.” Edelgard couldn’t bear to hear her say that now. Even with her head spinning, with shock freezing her thoughts, she couldn’t stand to hear the grief in Byleth’s voice. As though confessing some deep betrayal when it only made her loyalty and friendship that much more rare and precious. An unexpected miracle in Edelgard’s short, brutal life. “Thank you for walking at my side.”

This grief that numbed Edelgard to her core was only a fraction of what she would feel in the coming days, but Edelgard wouldn’t allow it to silence her now. Not when there was so little time to speak her heart. “I love you.” The forbidden words cracked the dam in her chest. “When I was young I admired you, and relied on your strength when I didn’t think that I ever would lean on anyone again. But when you returned… I came to know you again, and it was different. I was different. I love you.”

Byleth let out a sharp, pained exhale, a wry smile twisting her lips. “I love you too.”

“Byleth. Please.” Please, defy the odds one more time. Please, stay, she wanted to say. But a peculiar expression crossed Byleth’s face. Serene and beautiful, like a graven image of the goddess, her blue eyes gazing into some distant shore that Edelgard couldn’t reach.

“Don’t cry.” Byleth murmured, her fingers twitching against Edelgard’s cheek. “We will… meet again.”

Edelgard could never explain it in all the years of her long life. How could she fully describe the energy that gathered in the air, like the moment before lightning struck? The way Byleth’s words filled the air, drowning out the fires blazing around them? It was as though the world itself held its breath, listening for her command to spring back into alignment.

“We will meet again, El. In another time. I promise.” 

The words rushed through her like a wind, utterly unlike the warmth of light magic or the searing touch of reason. Yet it felt familiar, as though she had sensed it many times before without knowing. It resonated with her crest, hummed in her bones and rattled through her skull. 

She knew in that moment that Byleth was gone. Before she opened her eyes, before she looked down and saw that quiet, gentle light had gone out of Byleth’s eyes. She knew.

The legends would speak of how she stood and walked away. Of how Emperor Edelgard reforged the new Adrestian Empire into a nation of equality and freedom. They would not tell of how long she sat there. Of how she brushed Byleth’s hair from her face, and pressed a kiss to her brow. How she wrapped Byleth’s body in her red cloak, and carried her back to their Black Eagles in her own arms. 

Edelgard would live. She would move forward as she always had. Edelgard had faith in Byleth’s promise, the one that she could feel branded on her as indelible as any crest. They would meet again. 

* * *

In five hundred years the former Adrestian Empire grew and changed. For the first time the people were allowed to move forward. There was peace… and war. There were great leaders and there were weak, corrupt rulers. There were heroes and villains, and most of all there were those who lay in between. 

There was electricity and running water, telescopes and medicine and weapons of terrible war. All the depths and heights of humanity, unspooling unfettered by the will of a benevolent tyrant. The Immaculate One underestimated them, in both the best and worst ways. 

Five hundred years later Byleth’s will came to pass - she was after all some vestige of Sothis, and all her power and all her life went into that last desperate wish. Two children met on a fine spring morning, on a playground down the street from the best ice cream parlor in town. 

“Byleth, get back here you little rat.” Jeralt raced after his brat of a daughter, trying to growl even though he was laughing as hard as his little girl. “If you get lost I’ll leave you here.”

“No, you won’t!” Byleth darted under a table and then vaulted over another, and broke out into muffled laughter when Jeralt nearly went flying ass-over-teakettle over the table. 

Jeralt leaned over the table, shaking his fist at her retreating back. “I’ll catch you sooner or later!”

“Not a chance!”

It was an old game to race to the park after ice cream - partially to burn off Byleth’s ungodly sugar high, and mostly because it was fun. Jeralt’s daughter had a hell of an athletic streak, and he admitted he enjoyed the exercise too. Desk jobs were good money, but they weren’t as satisfying as working with his hands. 

Jeralt was far from an overprotective father. He told himself that anyway. But it troubled him when Byleth’s laughter suddenly fell silent. Where was she? He pushed through some brush, mentally cursing that the park was so overgrown. “Byleth?”

No answer.

Jeralt burst through the bushes, unfamiliar fear shooting up his spine. What would he tell Sitri if something happened to their daughter?When his eyes landed on his daughter’s back he let out a slow breath of relief - only for it to be cut short. What the hell?

Byleth was just standing there, for one. Staring at another little girl with big blue eyes and light brown hair, with both of the other girl’s hands clutched in her own. As though clinging to a lifeline. The little girl was smiling so wide, so bright, with tears streaming down her cheeks. It wasn’t an expression for a child to make, though Jeralt couldn’t put his finger on why. 

Byleth turned to him, her purple eyes - those eyes that didn’t match his or Sitri’s - wet with tears. He had never in his life seen his little girl smile like that. So much joy that it was heartbreaking. “Daddy. This is Edelgard.” 

Well. That explained absolutely nothing. 


	2. Monster

“What in every hell is that?” Hubert hissed, ducking down behind a fragment of wall to stare at Edelgard as if she would have an answer.

“Do I look like I know? Our allies didn’t breathe a word of this creature.”

Edelgard pressed her back to the stone at her back and craned her neck to peek over the barrier. The figure looming in the tomb was difficult to make out in the flickering torchlight - all she could make out was a serpentine neck and head, parted jaws revealing gleaming teeth. It looked like a wyvern, but far bigger and more heavily built than even the most carefully bred warmount.

“I know you’re there.” A voice came from the darkness. How? No one should be here on this so-called holy night. This tomb should be empty. “Show yourselves. Or I’ll come to you.”

That beast was a threat she couldn’t deny. Edelgard gestured to Hubert to stay where he was, and stepped out into the open. She was the more heavily armored of the two, and she trusted her full helm to hide her identity for now.

“Who speaks? Call off your beast, and we can talk like civilized people.” Not that she had any intent to deal with them honestly, whoever was here at this hour, but she couldn’t make out anyone in the dark. Hubert would need to see them to scour them from the earth. Even he wasn’t good enough to hit what he couldn’t see.

The creature’s wings flared and the slim neck arched like a proud horse, and Edelgard caught the mirror-glint of its eyes in the dark.

“You think I’m a beast, human?” She could hear a smile in the words. “You’re not wrong.”

Edelgard must be going mad. Surely she was seeing things. “Who - who are you?”

“I’m Byleth.” The dragon lifted her head, and in the light of a hanging lamp Edelgard could make out the planes of her face. Her features were like a wyvern’s only in the broadest strokes - while wyvern were intelligent creatures, there was true self-awareness behind those dark eyes. There was a softness to her face, like a dog’s expressiveness compared the stony disregard of a wolf. The resemblance only heightened the differences, only highlighted the alien nature of this being.

According to Adrestia’s history and the teachings of the church, dragons - true dragons, not the lesser wyverns and their kin - were beings created by the goddess. Fashioned with holy light in their bodies, created to protect in war and peace. She could believe it standing in Byleth’s presence. She gave off a power that was both beautiful and terrible. It reminded Edelgard of the first time she saw sunlight after imprisonment - the burning end of her nightmare, the searing grief and guilt and joy. She wondered if Hubert felt it as well, but she didn’t dare to tear her eyes away.

Those great wings unfurled, and lowered, like an eagle about to spring into the air. Her scales glittered in the torchlight, in shades of dull blue like a precious stone. “They were robbed in life.” She said it almost gently, as though she were denying a child sweets. “I won’t allow you to rob them in death.”

If there was anything that Edelgard understood in that moment it was this: there was a thin line between the monstrous and divine. And this creature embodied both.

“We have no choice.” Edelgard said, and hefted her axe in her numbed hand, because they didn’t. Because what she was feeling in her chest made hot terror roil in her throat.

“Lady Edelgard!” Hubert shouted. His hands flaring with the purple-black of his magic. “Defend yourself!”

She almost didn’t bring up her shield in time to block the gout of flame. The dragon’s roar shook the stones around them, her words booming right into Edelgard’s bones. Her shield heated to red at the edges, and her thick protective coat started to smoke.

What did she get them into?


End file.
